Key content planning steps for your podcast

How do you approach planning content for your podcast? Whilst it will depend to a certain extent on the format of your show, like any form of content creation, it all starts with knowing who you are creating for – your target audience and what you want to achieve.

Read on to see some of the key steps and approaches we find useful in helping to smooth the content planning workflow.

Know your audience

Ask yourself who your listeners are and what do they want to hear from you? What are their motivations and aspirations? What pain points or challenges are they trying to overcome? Or simply what makes them laugh, think, tick? Putting yourself in their shoes through profiling and persona building can be a helpful process and an important stage in understanding your audience.

Do your research 

Ideas may be popping into your head all the time, but there are tools out there that can help once you know who you’re creating for. Sites like Quora and Answer the Public show you questions that people are asking and how frequently they’re searching for information about a topic, whilst Reddit and BuzzSumo Discover tab show the subjects and stories shared most often on the internet. Don’t forget to speak to real people that typify your target audience too!

Get organised 

Write down ALL your ideas – the topics and subjects you want to talk about as well as ideal guests and contributors. Post-it notes or mind mapping can be great for this but simple lists can work too. Then review and consider what you have – can they be grouped together into topics and themes to create content buckets?

Be strategic 

Once you have identified the content and themes that you think will resonate with your audience and help attract listeners, you can start to build on these. Reach out to guests that can speak on those subjects and to potential collaborators who align with your podcast goals, and if you’re a brand or business, the products or services you offer.

Plan your recording schedule 

Consistency is super important, so whilst it sounds obvious, think about how frequently you can or want to record and when you want to release. Plan your number of episodes then make sure you’ve got enough content and guests lined up to cover it with a little contingency built in just in case. It’s always good to have a backup and if you don’t use it, you can always turn it into a special or bonus episode.